As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes, thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Cloud computing is a term that refers to deploying groups of hardware servers and software that enable multiple clients to execute in such a way that each client has their own, compartmentalized portion of the cloud computing environment (often simply referred to as “the cloud”). Cloud computing enables resources to be shared to achieve economies of scale and maximize the effectiveness of the shared resources. Cloud resources are shared by multiple users of multiple clients and are also dynamically allocated on demand. For example, a cloud computer facility that serves European users during European business hours with a specific application (e.g., financial software) may reallocate the same resources to serve North American users during North American business hours with a different application (e.g., a web server). With cloud computing, multiple users can access a single server to retrieve and update their data without purchasing licenses for different applications. By using clouding computing facilities rather than purchasing dedicated hardware and software, organizations pay only for the computing resources that they actually use.
However, with multiple cloud facilities from multiple cloud providers to choose from, organizations may find it difficult to make an “apples-to-apples” comparison among each of the multiple cloud facilities. For example, one cloud facility may provide performance metrics and a service level agreement using one set of metrics (e.g., peak throughput) while another cloud facility may provide performance metrics or a service level agreement using another set of metrics (e.g., average throughput), making direct comparisons of the two cloud facilities difficult. Organizations may find it difficult to identify the specific cloud facility that provides, for the organization's computing requirements, the highest performance at the lowest price.